TEXAS ranks 10th in number of nuclear warheads deployed, a change from 5th place (and 1,365 warheads) in 1992 and 6th place in 1985 (630 warheads). However, nuclear weapons are stored only at the Pantex Plant of the Department of Energy outside of Amarillo on a temporary basis while they await dismantlement. Though the composition is constantly in flux depending upon which warheads are scheduled, the current pool includes some 150 W69 SRAM warheads and 200 W79 8-inch artillery shells.

More From Taking Stock: Worldwide Nuclear Deployments 1998:

In October 1950 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) determined there was need for a second facility in addition to Burlington, and Pantex was chosen in 1951. Originally built by the Army Ordnance Corps in 1942, Pantex was used during World War II to load conventional munitions (bombs and artillery shells) with TNT. Throughout late 1950 and 1951 the plant was rehabilitated and began full operation (with assembly of Mark VI nuclear bombs) in May 1952. The operating contractor, the Proctor & Gamble Company, ran it for the U.S. Army Ordnance Command beginning in 1953. In 1956 Mason & Hanger took over and has run it ever since. With some exceptions Pantex evolved in the early years to become the assembly facility for the Livermore Laboratory, and Burlington assembled Los Alamos designed warheads.

By November 1951, with the Cold War heating up, the AEC estimated that five plants would be needed to match the future numbers of warheads that were planned to be built. A third facility was planned at Spoon River, Illinois. But by 1953 it was decided that two plants would suffice to meet production goals and plans for the other three were canceled. The Burlington Plant operated until 1975 when its functions were transferred to Pantex.

The disassembly/modification work continued at Medina until 1965, when all functions were transferred to Pantex. At the current 1,300 warhead per year retirement rate, it is estimated that some 300 to 400 weapons are present at Pantex at any one time. Warheads in the pipeline to be dismantled are also stored at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico. These include 200 W79s, 1,100 W69 SRAM warheads, and 450 W56 Minuteman II warheads. The last W48 155mm (6-inch) artillery warheads, W70 Lance warheads, W68 Poseidon warheads, and B57 nuclear depth and strike bombs have been completely retired.

Over the ten year period from October 1986 through September 1996, Pantex disassembled 12,514 warheads. It has more than enough capacity to disassemble the entire stockpile at current workload levels and will complete its current work orders in the year 2000. As of the end of 1997 there are approximately 10,750 “pits” (nuclear cores of warheads that have been dismantled) in storage at Pantex.

Web-posted Thursday, November 10, 2005
House approves measure that includes Pantex funding
Amarillo Globe-News

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2006, a measure that includes $523.3 million in Pantex Plant funding. The House approved the measure by a vote of 399-17. The Senate has yet to pass the bill, but is expected to take it up before Thanksgiving.

Through the appropriations process, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Amarillo, worked to secure approximately $76 million in additional funding for Pantex above President’s Bush’s budget request, according to Thornberry’s office. The bill includes $51 million more than the president’s request for Pantex’s Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities programs, infrastructure and facilities programs that support Pantex operations, bringing the total in that budget category to $181. 2 million.

Thornberry’s office said House members approved $126.2 million in funding for Pantex’s safeguards and securities programs, $25 million more than the president’s budget request.

“The missions performed at Pantex are vital to our national security. I am thankful for the support Pantex receives through this bill,” Thornberry said in a statement.

The Taylor Yard in 1925, courtesy of The River Project. Click the photograph and then scroll down to see what it looks like today as modeled in Google Earth.

What will its Future Reflect?

Taylor Yard is a beaten up place, marked by the phases of Los Angeles history. This 200 acre site, just north of downtown along the L.A. River, is reported to be the place where the City of Angels got its name. According to The River Project, Father Crespi, diarist for the Portola Expedition, gushed for over 1,000 words on August 2, 1769 about this “green, lush valley,” with its “very full flowing, wide river,” and “riot of color” in the surrounding hills. The expedition feasted on the plentiful game and fish and named the river and valley for “Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula,” or the Queen of the Angels.

The Taylor Yard today, via Google Earth

After almost 200 years as part of the Rancho San Raphael, which stayed with the Verdugo family after California was annexed by United States in 1850, the land was subdivided in 1881. The area then hosted farms, residences and summer cottages for a few decades before the natural splendor that wowed LA’s founders was buried definitively by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1920’s. Southern Pacific used the site as a freight-switching facility and employed about 75% of the workforce in the surrounding communities.

In the late 1930’s, the river’s naturally dynamic banks were imprisoned in concrete as part of a massive flood-control project, and Taylor Yard consolidated its central role in the city’s development as a modern industrial center.

As the local industrial economy declined, the landscape it made sank into abandonment and decay. In the 1960’s, Southern Pacific began re-routing trains away from downtown and Taylor Yard. In 1985, the site lost its function as a freight switching facility, along with several hundred jobs.

Such a shabby site seems an unlikely prize to fight over. But fought over it is. In 1999, when City Council approved a developer’s proposal for an industrial and retail development that would have put 650,000 square feet of industrial warehouses on the site and next to a residential area, the community fought back. An alliance of nearly 40 community, business, faith-based, environmental and social justice organizations successfully challenged the city’s approval of the project in court, and the developer opted to sell the land to the state.

The competition over the future of Taylor Yard reflects two competing visions of the site. One vision is grounded in the site’s current conditions – well-trampled, largely abandoned – and leads to proposals for utilitarian developments. The other vision calls upon the natural wonder the site once was to support demands to make the site serve the recreation, health and spiritual needs of its community the way it once served the community’s need for jobs.

In the first vision, there is little about the site that needs to be protected; in the second, the redemption of the neighborhood, the river and the city is at stake. As Arthur Golding, Chair of the L.A. River Task force of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, writes, “The Los Angeles River today is a relic of the physical, economic and intellectual landscape of the 1930’s.” He goes on to declare that, “to rethink the river is to discover a unique opportunity to define urban places, join neighborhoods and communities together, and reconnect us to our landscape and our history.”

In 2000 the second vision gained ground when the State of California allocated $45 million to purchase a portion of the site for a new state park. The groundbreaking for the 40-acre park was held in January 2005. The park will house soccer fields, a running track and other sports facilities, in addition to 20 acres of natural parkland, picnic tables, an amphitheater and bike paths. While scaled back from earlier plans, the groundbreaking nonetheless represents concrete progress towards a green, living Taylor Yard that nourishes nearby communities instead of dragging them down.

When the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHRSA) recently announced that the preferred route for a new high-speed train between L.A. and San Francisco would border the site – a proposal no doubt based on the site’s current conditions – outraged editorials reflected widespread community investment in the new, redemptive vision of Taylor Yard. As stated in an opinion column by the Los Angeles Downtown News, “There is simply too much potential for a great community resource to have it compromised by a high speed train.”

The CHRSA bowed to public pressure and, on August 3, 2005, announced that, “instead of selecting a specific alignment, a wide corridor has been identified for further study between Burbank and Los Angeles Union Station.”

The fact that the redemptive vision for Taylor Yard had enough traction to get the CHRSA to reclassify the site as part of an area for future study, rather than the preferred route for the high speed train, indicates a revolutionary departure from the usual thinking about environmental and community impacts from major projects. Normally, such thinking centers around how much harm a project is expected to cause. It’s a new thing to base activism, and subsequently public decision-making, on the improvements a project could prevent.

It’s a new and hopeful thing. And it’s not limited to Taylor Yard. Similar work has been going on for even longer to create a park in “the Cornfield,” another derelict industrial site about two miles downriver from Taylor Yard. Both projects are part of a broader initiative to “bring back” the L.A. River and remake the surrounding neighborhoods. The Center for Law in the Public Interest, one of the groups behind the “Heritage Parkscape” initiative to link cultural and historic resources around the heart of the city, articulates the challenge directly: “In park-poor Los Angeles, it is necessary to bring natural space to the people, and take people to the natural space.”

It is far from certain to what degree the new vision will prevail at Taylor Yard and in the city as a whole. Utilitarian needs for jobs and infrastructure remain, and not everyone is bought into the new vision. Regardless of the outcome of any individual struggle, however, the fight for Taylor Yard and other sites along the L.A. River provides a model for other campaigns to move beyond “preservation” to work for livable – and living – communities, even in places where they’ve already been lost.

In the American consciousness, few places evoke images of urban blight like those recalled when Newark, New Jersey is mentioned. You may have been there before, but you probably didn’t go on purpose, and most likely you weren’t staying.

Maybe this has something to do with the Newark Riot in 1967. Maybe it’s because Newark is the largest city in New Jersey, or that it’s nicknamed the brick city, not that you’ve ever heard anyone call it that.

Maybe it’s because there are only five major taxpayers in the city, which ranks dead last among major New Jersey cities for collecting taxes owed.

One of the very best things people say about Newark is that it is only twenty minutes from Manhattan. This proximity has made transportation Newark’s largest industry, and helps to consistently rank Newark among the most financially stable of New Jersey’s five largest cities. Somehow this prosperity has also made it one of the bleakest places in New Jersey to live, ranking 12th on the national list of most dangerous cities from the people who count this stuff. That’s remarkable if only considering the size of the city. Of course, the population sizes don’t take into account the sheer volume of goods and services that move through the region.

Operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bi-state agency, the Port of New Jersey is just one part of an inland distribution system that promises to be able to deliver shipped goods within one day of arrival to over one hundred million consumers. We’re looking at one key piece in a massive merchandise distribution machine.

This image shows Port Newark as the ultimate commercial hub. Superhighway, railway, jet aircraft, marine cargo containers, passengers, automobiles, and military hardware all come together in one sweep of the eye. The machine is in motion, moving goods around — you can see a few ships in port and cars parked everywhere.

The people that actually live in Newark, who number around 280,000 souls, reap few benefits from all this commercial activity nearby. Below is a representative overhead photo of the town of Newark itself. Note the harsh shadows cast by Soviet-style monolithic high rises laid down in neat rows.

In the above photo the angled street at bottom right is Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive. The park on the right side of the image with the neat criss-crossed paths is Lincoln Park and is one of three or four small public parks in town. Most of the green in town that you can see from space comes from the large cemeteries on the west edge of the town, which you’ll drive right past if you take the Garden State Parkway North.

The majority of Newark that is not devoted to transit and shipping consists of steel and glass office buildings, rough neighborhoods, and abandoned shopping districts.

It’s easy to understand why the city looks like it does in the above image, and why you probably don’t want to live there.

"The Federal Housing Administration redlined virtually all of Newark, preferring to back up mortgages in the white suburbs… Billed as transportation improvements, pure and simple, I-280, the New Jersey Turnpike, and I-78, harmed Newark as well… Because the new infrastructure allowed middle class people to commute into [New York City]."

"…Newark made some serious mistakes with public housing and urban renewal. Across administrations, the city leaders of Newark saw the federal government’s offer to pay for 100% of the costs of housing projects as a blessing. While other cities were skeptical about putting so many poor and socially dysfunctional individuals together… Newark avidly pursued federal dollars. Eventually, Newark would have a higher percentage of its residents in public housing than any other American city." nationmaster encyclopedia

In the above image you can see the Elizabeth Marine Terminal to the south of Port Newark.

The Newark Liberty International Airport with it’s trademark oval access road from U.S. 1 is visible to the west. This airport’s longest runway is only 9300 feet, which is considered rather short for international traffic and makes for some hair-raising takeoffs and landings with larger aircraft.

Towards the top of the image, above the railroad tracks but below the river, is the city of Newark itself.

You can actually get to recognize urban blight from space. It’s easy to see disadvantaged places once you get to recognize them. How many can you make out in Newark?

Looking around at blighted areas from space makes me realize just what a great job the SimCity 4 team did representing neighborhoods in decline.

There are three piers on the east side of the above image, which isn’t Newark at all but Bayonne, New Jersey. Two piers jut out and are easily recognized, the third is just above these two and is a military terminal.

The northernmost of the two main, rectangular piers is the Auto Marine Terminal, which is dedicated exclusively to vehicle imports and exports. BMW and freight companies lease space there to prep their new vehicles for shipment and put them on trains for the American market, or to export them overseas. Guess which happens more often?

Here’s a close up of this terminal with thousands of new cars destined for the U.S. coated in protective white plastic. The U.S. imports the cars, and imports the fuels to put into the cars. The pollution that results from burning all this fuel stays in the air, water, and our bodies.

The lower or southern pier from above is the Military Ocean Terminal, which was recommended for closure in 1995 but is still open in some sort of quasi-official way.

"Military Ocean Terminal, Bayonne, NJ [MOTBY] is a unique strategic asset. No other port on the east or gulf coasts, commercial or military, can duplicate its combination of advantages in the support of power projection from the continental United States without the disruption of commercial port activities. This was amply demonstrated during the Gulf war and operations in Somalia and Haiti. Dozens of units shipped through MOTBY as well as outsized cargo such as M1A2 tanks from as far as Fort Hood, TX." Global Security

In the image of the above military terminal, you can see a ship of some kind sitting in the enormous dry dock at the end of the pier. The ship is dwarfed by the size of the dock.

This whole area, built on landfill, is an EPA Superfund site. It’s contaminated with hazardous waste. There are at least two 800 gallon tanks of the stuff still buried in the ground.

South of those two main piers is an enormous facility for fuel storage, transport, and refining. Previously operated by Exxon, this area located on East 22nd Street is also one big superfund site. Toxic wastes, again. This place really looks the part, and more than likely will never be cleaned up due to the costs involved.

New Jersey is known as The Garden State. We used to call this a tank farm. Note the lack of any of the security apparatus that you find around prisons or military bases. No gate towers or limited access. Certainly there must be a fence?

In this view of the region you can see Upper New York Bay as well as lower Manhattan. Above the boat traffic on the bay, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island welcome ships to New York.

Here you can see the entire Island of Manhattan to the northeast, and make out Central Park. The island directly south of the New Jersey port is Staten Island, by far the least populated and most remote of the five boroughs of New York City.